Tag: advent2011

Day 15 of the LEGO City and Star Wars Advent Calendars for 2011.

In City, we have the chassis of a car, which from looking at the box I am guessing that tomorrow will bring the top of it, making a police car.

In Star Wars, we have a microscale Republic Attack Gunship (an atmospheric ship seen in the prequel movies and Clone Wars).

Thanks to Steven Combs of Bricks in my Pocket, who is also doing an Advent calendar series, though only focusing on Star Wars, I can now sound like I know what I’m talking about. He posted a link to the Brickipedia article about the Star Wars Advent calendar, listing what all the things are. (SPOILER ALERT – if you go to that page you can find out about all 24 days! For me, half the fun is not knowing what each day will bring, so be warned!) According to that article, here are the models we’ve seen so far:

• Day 1: Republic Cruiser
• Day 2: Nute Gunray
• Day 3: Nute Gunray’s walking mechano chair
• Day 4: Homing Spider Droid
• Day 5: Boba Fett’s Slave I
• Day 6: Chewbacca
• Day 7: Tools Rack
• Day 8: Rebel Pilot
• Day 9: X-wing
• Day 10: Imperial Shuttle
• Day 11: Pilot battle droid with gun
• Day 12: Snowspeeder
• Day 13: R2-Q5
• Day 14: Mouse Droid
• Day 15: Republic attack gunship

Day 14 of the LEGO City and Star Wars Advent Calendars for 2011.

Today City brings us a crime-fighting desk, with a cute yet simple lamp using a minifig telescope as the pole, and a magnifying glass over a blank grey tile – presumably one being examined for fingerprints.

In Star Wars we have a simple yet effective design for a small droid, or very small scale car perhaps. I think it’s one of the little droids from the original movie that the Jawas were selling?

For a context shot I’ve brought together the police station, the recent police officer, and the new desk; and the recent three droids.

Day 13 of the LEGO City and Star Wars Advent Calendars for 2011.

No jail or police station is complete without a cop. He comes with two walkie-talkies, which have been around since 1978, and two baseball caps, which are a new style this year. If he wears a baseball cap on a Tuesday, what do they wear on Casual Friday?

Star Wars provides the anti-R2D2. I’m sure it’s something from Clone Wars or maybe one of the prequel movies, but I don’t recognize it. It’s nice to get those legs in black though.

No group photo today.

Day 12 of the LEGO City and Star Wars Advent Calendars for 2011.

For the second day in a row, City provides us with a piece of the police/jail building. It looks like this completes the building.

Star Wars is back to the cool micro ships, this time with a clever little snowspeeder from Empire Strikes Back.

Star Wars doesn’t seem to be following the multi-day themes, so we’ll just show the updated police building:

Day 11 of the LEGO City and Star Wars Advent Calendars for 2011.

Today City brings us the third piece of the police/jail building. I don’t remember ever seeing an Advent calendar from LEGO where a building is made out of several days’ entries.

Over in Star Wars, the cool micro scale ship trend appears to have dried up, and we have a basic battle droid, which doesn’t thrill me. But I do like the extra arms – it comes with two of each type of arm, and bonus arms are always useful.

The battle droid doesn’t really fit with previous days so this time I’ll just show you a picture of the three parts (so far) of the police building put together:

Day 10 of the LEGO City and Star Wars Advent Calendars for 2011.

City fails to impress today, giving us a little campfire, and a fish-o-one-tail (as opposed to cat-o-nine-tails). Again with the oddly inappropriate weapons. Merry Christmas.

However on the Star Wars front, we have a mini ship that I would say was awesome, but I’m jaded after yesterday’s super-cool X-wing fighter: the Imperial Shuttle. More mini models of LEGO models built by minifigs.

Wouldn’t a micro scale house or garbage truck be more awesome than a dumb campfire? Who’s with me? C’mon LEGO, you can do better.

Accumulated items from days 6-10:

And as a reminder, here’s days 1-5:

Day 9 of the LEGO City and Star Wars Advent Calendars for 2011.

In City we have a minifig dressed for the Arctic. Or Denmark, at least. And he’s armed. Axe murderer or tree chopper? You be the judge.

Star Wars has the best day yet! This microscale X-Wing Fighter is all kinds of awesome. Or maybe I should say, a minifig scale model of an UCS X-Wing Fighter?

Accumulated items since the current story arcs started on day 6:

Day 8 of the LEGO City and Star Wars Advent Calendars for 2011.

City provides us with a bed and nightstand. Easily the lamest entry so far in either calendar. At least we get an extra mug.

Star Wars has a Rebel pilot – just the bare minifig, without any accessories. The orange visor is printed on his head, which limits that part’s usefulness, but then it’s a “flesh” colored head and I only use yellow ones in my models anyway. From my point of view, this is a pretty lame entry as well.

Accumulated items since the current story arcs started on day 6:

Day 7 of the LEGO City and Star Wars Advent Calendars for 2011.

In today’s City calendar entry, we get stuff to put beneath the Christmas tree: two wrapped gifts, a skateboard, and a helmet for the skateboarder.

Meanwhile, the Star Wars entry features a crossbow, hammer, and wrench, with a display holder. I’m not quite sure what this has to do with Star Wars, where blasters and light sabers are more the norm, but whatever. Tools for Chewbacca to play with, I suppose?

Since yesterday started a new story arc, and to avoid getting the “accumulated items” picture from getting too crowded, for now I’m just showing days 6-7.

Day 6 of the LEGO City and Star Wars Advent Calendars for 2011.

After the first five days it looks like we’re starting a new story arc. Now we have Chewbacca in the Star Wars realm – finally, someone I recognize! – and a nice little Christmas Tree in City. There was a glitch in the instructions for the tree – one of the trans-yellow 1×1 round plates was not shown in the picture under the flap, and I initially had two leftover of those… but I looked at the box art and found where they intended it to go. There’s still one extra, but LEGO usually does that.

Speaking of instruction mistakes, yesterday’s Slave I had one… a commenter pointed out to me that the two tiles on the top (the dark grey grille and the light grey smooth tile) were transposed. I built it to match the instructions, but the box art disagreed. Or rather, some of the places where it was depicted had it one way, and some the other way. For today I swapped it around as I agree with the commenter that it looks better this way. I did some Google Image Search investigation into what the original one from the movie looked like, and I don’t see a grille there at all, so it’s hard to say. Many of the images did have a darker part in the middle of the craft, and lighter grey towards the tip which matches the way I have it now, but I question LEGO’s choice to use a grille tile there.

Here are the accumulated items so far: